London A judge in England sentenced a teenager to more than 50 years in jail Thursday for what he described as the most severe, appalling, and exceedingly dangerous crime: stabbing three young girls to death at a dancing class with a Taylor Swift theme.
According to Judge Julian Goose, 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana intended to attempt mass murder of contented, innocent young females.
Goose stated that as Rudakubana was younger than eighteen at the time of the offense, he was unable to impose a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
However, the judge ruled that he will probably never be released because he must spend 52 years, less the six months he has been detained, before becoming eligible for parole.
Rudakubana killed Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6 when he attacked the youngsters in the coastal town of Southport in July while he was just 17 years old. Along with Leanne Lucas, a teacher, and John Hayes, a local businessman who stepped in, he injured eight more girls, ages seven to thirteen.
The nation was outraged by the incident, which sparked both soul-searching and street unrest. A public investigation into how the system failed to stop the murderer, who had been referred to the authorities several times due to his violent preoccupation, has been declared by the government.
Defendant disrupts the hearing
Rudakubana was charged with three murders, ten attempted murders, and possession of an al-Qaida manual, a dagger, and the poison ricin. On Monday, he surprisingly altered his plea to guilty on all counts.
However, he was not present in court on Thursday to hear the sentencing.
Wearing a gray prison tracksuit, he had been carried into the dock at Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England hours before. Rudakubana, however, stopped the prosecutors while they were presenting the evidence, yelling that he was feeling sick and that he needed to see a paramedic.
When the accused kept yelling, Goose told him to leave. Coward! was yelled by someone in the courtroom as Rudakubana was removed.
Without him, the hearing went on.
Horror on a summer day
The attack happened on the first day of summer vacation, when 26 young girls were gathered around tables creating bracelets and singing Taylor Swift songs, according to prosecutor Deanna Heer.
With a big knife in hand, Rudakubana broke in and started stabbing the girls and their teacher.
Video of the suspect pulling into the Hart Space venue in a taxi and going inside was displayed to the court. Screams broke out in a matter of seconds, and youngsters, some of them injured, fled outside in fear. One of the girls reached the doorway, but the assailant dragged her back inside. Despite being stabbed thirty-two times, she lived.
As the images aired in court, there were sobs and gasps.
According to Heer, two of the deceased youngsters had particularly horrifying wounds that are hard to attribute to anything other than sadistic intent. One of the deceased girls sustained 85 wounds, and another had 122 injuries.
A teenager obsessed with violence
Rudakubana had a lifelong preoccupation with violence, murder, and genocide, according to the prosecution.
He was simply there to kill. As the victims’ families sat in the courtroom, she added that he specifically targeted the youngest and most defenseless members of society.
“It’s a good thing those children are dead, I’m so glad, I’m so happy,” Heer said Rudakubana remarked when he was brought to a police station.
After far-right extremists seized on false rumors that the attacker was an asylum-seeker who had just arrived in the United Kingdom, the killings set off days of anti-immigrant rioting across the nation. Some claimed that the government and police were hiding facts and that the crime was an Islamist attack.
Rudakubana was born to Christian parents from Rwanda in Cardiff, Wales, and his reason has remained a mystery to investigators. On his gadgets, police discovered materials pertaining to topics such as Nazi Germany, the massacre in Rwanda, and car bombs.
He had been notified to several authorities for his violent hobbies and behavior in the years prior to the incident. He was dangerous, but none of the agencies recognized it.
He called a children’s helpline in 2019 and asked, “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?” He claimed that he had brought a knife to school with the intention of killing a bully. He was found guilty of assault two months later after using a hockey stick to strike a classmate.
The definition of terrorism
Prosecutors said Rudakubana was referred three times to the government s anti-extremism program, Prevent, when he was 13 and 14 once after researching school shootings in class, then for uploading pictures of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to Instagram and for researching a London terror attack.
However, they came to the conclusion that since Rudakubana had no obvious political or religious motivation, his crimes shouldn’t be considered acts of terrorism. Heer claimed that his goal was to commit mass murder as an end in and of itself, rather than for a specific goal.
According to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, legislation may need to be updated to address a new threat from violent individuals whose diverse motivations challenge the conventional understanding of terrorism. These individuals include young men, misfits, and loners who commit acts of extreme violence in their bedrooms.
Wrenching testimony from victims
In court, a number of survivors and family members gave moving testimonies about how the attack had destroyed their lives.
The pain of being both a victim and a witness has been terrible, according to Lucas, 36, who taught the dance class.
She remarked, “I can’t be kind to myself or accept praise because how can I live knowing I survived when children died?”
A 14-year-old survivor, who can t be named because of a court order, said that while she was physically recovering. The mental anguish from that day will always be a part of us.
I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing that we think you re a coward, she said.
The prosecutor read out a statement from the parents of Alice Da Silva Aguiar, who said their daughter s killing had shattered our souls.
When we cooked, we fed three people. Now we only cook for two. They said, “It doesn’t seem right.” Alice was our purpose for living, so what do we do now?